November 12, 2018
Written by: Ted Geoghegan
Starring: Barbara Crampton, Andrew Sensenig, Lisa Marie
Quote: "...Oh, nobody knew what was under this house until it was too late!"
Trivia: Numerous characters in this film are named after characters or people associated with the Lucio Fulci film The House by the Cemetery (1981), which this film was inspired by.
This is a movie that I have been flipping past on Shudder for a while now. Haunted house and possession movies are usually not my jam (I'm more of a slasher movie junkie) but I thought I would give this one a shot. Damn am I glad I did! This was actually a really scary movie! Like honestly scary. I had to pause the movie twice to change over my laundry down the apartment hallway and found myself constantly looking around for ghosts and demons. Now that is a testament to a good horror movie! And gory! I had not expected so much gore in a haunted house film. They are usually more "jump scary," a scare tactic that rarely works on me and seems cheap. But no, this film is drenched in blood and gore both figuratively and literally. The movie also has some excellent acting performances by everyone involved and even a couple of twists and turns to keep the viewer on their toes. Finally, I was shocked to see the name Brian W. Collins in the movie's credits for End Title. Brian W. Collins is the writer for the Horror Movie A Day blog where he watched and wrote about a horror movie every day for six years. It was his interview on the Harmontown podcast that gave me the idea to start this blog. Apparently he also does end credits for horror movies. Good on ya Brian!
The movie follows a couple who move to a new house in the New England area after their son dies in a car accident. Quickly upon arriving at the house, the wife mistakes bizarre occurrences to be her son trying to communicate with her. However, after enlisting the help of their two friends May and Jacob, they begin to suspect that it is something darker that is trying to communicate with them. To add the weirdness they are feeling, the entire town seems to be both fascinated and repulsed by them. Their neighbor Dave sheds some light on the situation by giving the history of the family who lived in the house 120 years before. The father, Dagmar, was a mortician who was caught selling the bodies of the town's dead relatives and was run out of town. This seems to explain the situation until later at a restaurant Dave kills a waitress and discusses Dagmar with the restaurant owner explaining that Dagmar needs to feed on the blood of a new family every thirty years otherwise the town itself will pay the price tenfold. The demons that haunt the house become increasingly violent, killing the married couple's friends and their son and his girlfriend. The townspeople themselves go into the house as an attempt to force the family to stay and be their sacrifice. I will not give away the ending other than to say it is extremely bloody.
Alright, let's get this out of the way. The finale scene owns! It is so incredibly gory and brutal that is reminiscent of Tarantino's blood fest. I think this is why the film surprised so many people the way it did in 2015. Nobody, myself included, expected such a brutal third act. However, the movie is not without a precedence. The movie was inspired and is in many ways an homage to the 1970s and '80s Italian horror films, particularly Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento. While the filmmakers maybe hadn't mastered atmosphere quite to the level of Argento or used gore to the same effect as Fulci, We Are Still Here shows us that they were not afraid to give it their college bests. There are also small references to the filmmakers' inspirations scattered throughout the film. A reference to a Lovecraft hospital here, naming a character after a Fulci character there, a visual homage to Argento's Tenebre there. It is obvious that the filmmakers were deeply influenced by the gore of the '70s and '80s horror. However, instead of trying to recreate these movies that had already had their moment, the film brings elements of these films into the twenty first century breathing fresh air into them.
The movie continues to break the rules of the tired haunted house genre by having the horror follow characters outside of the actual house. During the initial murder scene the son of the married couple is killed in the house. His girlfriend is able to escape, get in her car and is nearly a mile down the road before a ghost murders her from the backseat. I would've thought this to be against the unspoken rules of a haunted house movie, but instead, the breaking of this rule signifies that this was going to be a different type of haunted house movie.
While the third act obviously steals the show, the rest of the movie is not without its own merits. It is here that the filmmakers do a great job of building atmosphere and tension between the mother who thinks it is her child's spirit and the viewer who knows it is something much much darker. The murder of the friend's son and girlfriend unbeknownst to the characters in the film also ratchets up the suspense for the viewer. Once again, we, the viewer, are in the know of what is happening while the characters themselves unknowingly bumble towards imminent danger.
Spoilers: I loved the ending. Aside from the massacre, which was of course awesome, I like that the Dagmar family spared the married couple. This could be taken a few different ways. I think the intended meaning behind this was that the ghost family had their fill of vengeance and was satisfied to go back to wherever demon ghosts go. However, I think it was that the ghost family empathized with the married couple. The reason the ghost family was out killing was revenge for the pain they were put through. This married couple had lost the life of their son, a feeling the ghost family could understand. I believe this is what set them apart from the house's previous victims. Or it could be that the family brought the ghost of their dead son with them and that it was his behind the scenes ghost work that saved them. That is why in the last moments of the film, the married couple walks into the basement and the father says hello to his son. Either way, it adds a bit of ambiguity to the film making it significantly more interesting.
...what's your thoughts?
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